Senate ethics officer suspends probe of Mike Duffy as red chamber considers role for auditor general

Mike Duffy: Senate ethics officer suspends probe

OTTAWA — The Senate ethics officer has suspended her investigation of a payment by the prime minister’s top aide to Sen. Mike Duffy because the Senate has asked the RCMP to review the situation.

Lyse Ricard can still return to her investigation if new information emerges about the $90,000 cheque Sen. Mike Duffy received from former Harper chief of staff Nigel Wright as part of the repayment of Duffy’s improper living expenses.

Senators were informed Tuesday of her decision to suspend the ethics probe.

“The Senate Ethics Officer (SEO) is suspending her review for the time being since the Senate has referred the matter to the RCMP. The SEO will not comment further at this time,” Ricard’s office said in a statement to Postmedia News. Sen. Raynell Andreychuk, who chairs the red chamber’s conflict of interest committee, said senators did not order Ricard to put her investigation on pause, and said Ricard is not “walking away” from the issue.

The Senate itself, meanwhile, prepared to debate a motion Wednesday from the government leader that would see federal Auditor General Michael Ferguson conduct a “comprehensive audit” of Senate spending, including the expenses of individual senators. What “comprehensive” entails has yet to be determined, but Conservative Senate leader Marjory LeBreton has said all options are on the table.

It would mark the second time in the last three years that the Senate has had the federal auditor general review its spending.

The last report from Ferguson, tabled last year, found problems with oversight, including a lack of documentation in a handful of the limited number of cases his office reviewed.

LeBreton conceded that a broader audit could dig up more damaging findings.

“People will have to live by the consequences of their own actions and an institution like the Senate, they’ll have to answer for themselves,” said LeBreton. “They’re going to have to have a look in the mirror and have a strong conversation with the person looking back at them.”

Conservative Sen. Jacques Demers agreed Ferguson should review Senate spending to ensure members of the upper chamber were being accountable with tax dollars.

“Accountability is a big word,” Demers said. “It means you know what you have to do (and) you just do it. In this case, if they find something, it’s going to have to be the people who are going to have to answer … if they did something wrong.”

“I have no objection to having the auditor general do work the auditor general can do,” said Sen. James Cowan, the Liberal leader in the Senate. Cowan told reporters he wanted more details about the proposal.

But he also called the motion a distraction from questions that continue to dog the government about the $90,000 cheque Wright wrote to Duffy.

In other related developments:

• Prime Minister Stephen Harper was grilled again in the House of Commons Tuesday over the Wright-Duffy payment.

• Members of the House of Commons were preparing to debate two motions from the New Democrats to cut funding altogether to the upper chamber.

One, from NDP Treasury Board critic Mathieu Ravignat, calls on the government to cut all funding to the red chamber on Canada Day, making it impossible for the Senate to operate. A second motion, from NDP MP Pat Martin, will call on the government to cut $58 million in program funding to the Senate. Martin has attempted to cut funding to the Senate in previous years to no avail.

• Duffy appeared in the red chamber Tuesday, but left Parliament Hill without saying a word about the $90,000 payment between him and Wright.

• The chairman of the Senate’s internal economy committee suggested that answers about Sen. Pamela Wallin’s expenses could come by the summer, but that date has not been set. “I don’t tell the auditors how fast they have to do it,” Sen. David Tkachuk told reporters on his way into the Senate chamber. “I’d love to have it today. You think I want this process to sit out there for the summer months?”

• Tkachuk also said that two other senators — Liberal Mac Harb and Conservative Patrick Brazeau — have not repaid a combined $100,000 in living expenses that the Senate has ordered them to repay.

“We’re asking for their money back and I’m sure we will get it back,” Tkachuk said.

• Despite Ricard’s suspension of the Senate ethics probe, Federal ethics commissioner Mary Dawson, who polices the House of Commons and political staffers, continues to investigate Wright’s role in the Duffy payment.

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